The high cost of low resilience

Today’s business leaders face a turbulent world: political turmoil, economic upheaval and disruptive technologies are just some of the challenges ahead. Of course, there are also plenty of risks closer to home.

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High-profile dangers like fraud, regulatory fines and cyberattacks frequently make the headlines, so it’s little surprise that business leaders are preoccupied by these topics. However, more mundane challenges can be just as damaging to an organisation’s reputation and revenues. One crucial consideration in this regard is internet connectivity.

Today, every business is a digital business. Success rests on high-performance access to cloud-based data, applications and services. From email and web conferencing, to online research and e-commerce, the internet has also become critical to day-to-day operations and employee productivity. Whether the costs are direct or indirect, businesses lose money with every second of connectivity downtime.

Weighing up risks.

Internet downtime costs UK organisations an estimated £12.3bn in lost productivity each year. In comparison, regulatory fines – a very well-known and much-publicised business risk – only cost UK firms around £1bn in the five years to 2013.

As a whole, connectivity downtime totals 149 million hours per annum, with the majority of firms experiencing 43 hours offline each. For more than a third of companies (38%), connectivity failures also bring their entire business operations to a halt. Clearly, this is a corporate risk that warrants more attention.

Go colo.

Enterprises wrestling with this challenge should consider colocation. The best facilities are built to exacting standards for resilience and security, with robust disaster recovery procedures for mission-critical systems. With multiple big-name networks, IXPs and cloud providers all sharing the same facility, enterprises can diversify their connectivity - ensuring that downtime from a single platform or provider does not affect business-as-usual.

Any well-run, resilient and secure colo environment should also be backed up by strict SLAs, proven compliance with industry standards and state-of-the-art systems to monitor and manage operations 24x7. Look for 99.999% uptime SLAs, as well as a guaranteed response from engineers in minutes if issues appear.

Interxion’s London data centre campus delivers all these benefits, empowering connectivity that’s not just robust and reliable, but also better performing. Alongside more than 90 connectivity providers, eight major CDNs and two IXPs on-site, our Cloud Connect service also enables enterprises to place their private IT infrastructure right on the cloud’s doorstep and connect to the most popular hyperscale cloud platforms through private access points. This provides a cost-effective route to superior cloud performance, whilst also maintaining security and agility.

Given the high costs of low resilience, ensuring superior connectivity is a challenge no organisation can afford to ignore.